Hello Ned: Your point is well taken. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to convince the average listener, even those acquainted with the actual sound of the lute, that a real, dry, non-reverberant sound is ideal. The problem, as I see (or hear) it is that more people have heard the lute on recordings than live and close up. Certain prolifically-recorded players have opted for a sound that was described some years back by a Gramophone reviewer as a 'psycho-acoustic nightmare, distant and close at the same time'. If we don't gravitate towards a reverberant sound, we can be easily dismissed as not ideal. Another dimension of the problem lies with available technology. It is very, very difficult to find a recording engineer who understands the simplicity of the lute sound well enough to record it simplistically. When we first approached our current engineer (Grammy-award winner, Will Russell) and played as an example our favorite recording of Emma Kirby and Jakob Lindberg on BIS, his immediate reaction was to ask permission to make us sound better than that. It was a process, but we finally convinced him that a simple mic placement yielded the sound and natural balance we were seeking. We have experimented on Youtube with a few different representations of sound, and it is interesting to see the results. Typically, the more reverberant sound seems to get more repeated hits. Our recent posting of Sicut cervus/Sitivit anima by Palestrina is recorded in a live space with absolutely no tampering with the Zoom H2, place about 10 feet away. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUDplApE45U But we deliberately recorded the Christ Child Lullaby at home in a dry acoustic with the Zoom closely placed in an attempt to judge how listeners would react. The appeal of the music seems to have attracted hits despite the dry sound. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9atiweh44WU Personally, I agree that one does not want to hear a lute's volume boosted to represent something it is not. The idea of having my head trapped inside of a lute makes me afraid. But the fact is, we have to aim for a standard that is not going to drive the average listener away because the music is 'better than it sounds.' A quandary indeed. Best, Ron Andrico www.mignarda.com > Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2010 13:53:26 -0400 > To: [email protected] > CC: [email protected] > From: [email protected] > Subject: [LUTE] Re: Vice Nisee > > I think my point about lutes being 'enlarged' in the recording process could best be made by referring to specific lute recordings. Comparing Jakob Lindberg's recordings of Dowland (reissued on Brilliant ) with Hopkinson Smiths recording "Dowland: A Dream" on Naive, I hear considerably more reverberation on the Smith recording than on the one of Lindberg. At the same approximate volume, Smith's instrument sounds much larger (to me) than Lindberg's. More importantly, Lindberg's instrument sounds more natural to me than Smith's; more like what I'm accustomed to hearing from a lute played live. To be sure, the recordings of both instruments underwent some electronic processing before being transferred to CD. My subjective impression is that Smith's received more added reverb than Lindberg's. That's what I hear in the Vice Nisee video/audio and - perhaps(?) - what Suzanne also heard. > > Ned > On Jul 22, 2010, at 6:37 PM, howard posner wrote: > > > The lute would necessarily be amplified and there would necessarily be microphones; that's the nature of electronic transmission of sound. If it sounds too loud for you, turn down the volume on your computer. If it then doesn't sound loud enough, turn the volume up. Repeat process until it sounds just right. > > > > On Jul 22, 2010, at 3:05 PM, Edward Mast wrote: > > > >> I agree with Suzanne, both about the sound and the playing. I've made this observation here before; the tendency of recording engineers today seems to be to make lutes sound as large as concert grand pianos. > >> > >> Ned > >> On Jul 22, 2010, at 11:36 AM, Suzanne Angevine wrote: > >> > >>> Was it the acoustic that was lush? I almost had the feeling that it was an amplified instrument and was looking for the cord or tiny mike somewhere. But it was nice playing. > > > > > > > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html > > > __________________________________________________________________
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